Harold Camping 'mystified' over no judgment day

Monday

May 23, 2011 at 12:01 AMMay 23, 2011 at 11:17 PM

Camping first calculated the date of May 21, 2011 for his first judgment day book “1994?” His complicated calculation was based on the time that Christ went to the cross in 33 A.D. But in that book, Camping decided judgment day would occur in September 1994 because of the Scripture verse “… but for the elect’s sake those days should be shortened” (Matthew 24:22).

Antonio Prado

Family Radio President Harold Camping’s prediction that May 21, 2011 was the beginning of judgment day got everyone’s attention, whether they believed it or scoffed at it.

Scores of people wrote about the prediction on Facebook and Twitter, many of them very critical when Saturday came and went. A tweet from one man stated that he wished the Rapture had occurred to rid the earth of “annoying Christians.”

Camping boldly predicted to followers at the Oakland, Calif.-based Family Radio headquarters that judgment day would begin in New Zealand with a devastating earthquake that would begin at 6 p.m. Saturday, and then it would proceed to ripple across the earth as 6 p.m. hit each time zone.

Many people kept a watchful eye for news reports out of New Zealand, which is 16 hours ahead of the East Coast in the United States. When the earthquake failed to happen, news articles soon began to appear declaring Camping’s prediction a bust.

Camping was so convinced of the prediction based on an intricate biblical calendar of history that he told followers at his last Bible study –– the final part of a series called “To God Be The Glory” –– he would pray so they would be included in the estimated 200 million people who would experience the Rapture.

Based on figures given in Revelation 9, Camping said it was a strong possibility that God would save 200 million people in all and bring them into heaven. Meanwhile, the rest of the world would perish on Saturday or experience “hell on earth” until Oct. 21, when the world and the universe would be destroyed by fire.

For more than three years, Camping, 89, a retired civil engineer and co-founder of Family Radio, said no news media had contacted him for his prediction, evidence that they were afraid of the prediction, as all men intuitively fear judgment day.

But as the nonprofit Family Radio embarked on a multi-million advertising campaign worldwide that included huge billboards and traveling caravans, all of the major news media outlets picked up the story.

This past weekend, Camping, of Alameda, Calif., was reportedly “mystified” that nothing happened Saturday. His wife told the press that her husband was in seclusion after he was wrong for the second time on his doomsday prediction.

Camping first calculated the date of May 21, 2011 for his first judgment day book “1994?” His complicated calculation was based on the time that Christ went to the cross in 33 A.D. But in that book, Camping decided judgment day would occur in September 1994 because of the Scripture verse “… but for the elect’s sake those days should be shortened” (Matthew 24:22).

More than three years ago, Camping began preaching May 21 as the date based on a number of proofs he came across as he continued his 50-year study of the Bible that led him to examine such difficult books as Jeremiah and Daniel. Namely, language in II Peter 3 gave cryptic language that showed that the day of judgment would begin on the 7,000-year anniversary of the devastating flood of Noah’s ark.

In short, he added 7,000 years to the date of the Noachian flood, which occurred on the 17th day of the second month of the ancient calendar in 4990 B.C., subtracting one year because the Roman calendar did not have the year 0, to get to May 21. Just as God told Noah exactly seven days before the flood would begin, he had cryptically laid out the time of the final judgment, Camping said.

The gay pride movement and recent devastating earthquakes were evidence, as well, Camping told followers. Shortly after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan this year, Camping juxtaposed Japan with Haiti, whose earthquake hit in 2010, noting that one of the richest and one of the poorest countries, respectively, had been devastated by earthquakes.

To a man, all of the local churches and congregations said in a previous article that “... of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36).

It did not matter if they were Episcopalian, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist or a nondenominational Bible Church.

The Rev. David Albert Farmer, pastor of Silverside Church in Wilmington, Del., delivered a sermon on Sunday that he had prepared months in advance: “Why Judgment Day Didn’t Happen Yesterday.”

“There have been end-of-time predictions throughout the history of Judaism, early Christianity and modern Christianity,” he told a local newspaper in March. “100 percent of the predictions have been wrong. No exceptions.”